A Danish/Netflix co-production The Bombardment is dramatization of an RAF raid that mistakenly bombed a religious school in addition to the target the national headquarters for the Gestapo.

In March 1945 the Danish resistance feared that the Gestapo were on the verge of destroying their organization and after much pleading and the Gestapo’s use of captured resistance member as human shields the RAF launches Operation Carthage, a daring low-level raid to bomb the Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen.

The Bombardment, titled The Shadow in my Eye in Denmark, uses fictional characters to explore the events leading up to and immediately following the raid.

Henry – a young boy traumatized by an aerial attack he witnessed and now with a crippling fear of open skies and psychosomatic muteness.

Rigmor — Henry’s cousin and a very self-assured and outgoing young girl. Henry comes to live with her in the city where he can better grapple with his fear of the open sky.

Eva — Rigmor’s younger friend who has also witnessed the brutality of the war.

Teresa — a nun in training and teacher at the school whose faith has been damaged by the horrors of the war.

Frederick – a young man collaborating with the occupying Nazis who becomes infatuated with Teresa.

The Bombardment does a fine job capturing the daily life of the people of Copenhagen as they deal with both the tedium of normal life alongside with the terror and brutality of German occupation. The film’s opening text establishes the coming disaster giving the normal daily life a cloud of impending doom.  It also does a fair representation of the tragic accident that led several of the bombers in the flight to attack the school instead of their intended target. While characters grow and change by their encounter with the bombing the film actually leans back from making any grand statement about war, leaving such conclusions to each viewer’s own interpretation. While not a film I will revisit or even find terribly memorable The Bombardment is competently constructed and does not overstay its welcome.

The Bombardment streams on Netflix.